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CJEU rules US cloud servers don’t comply with GDPR and what this means for web analytics
17 juillet 2020, par Jake ThorntonBreaking news: On July 16, 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that any cloud services hosted in the US are incapable of complying with the GDPR and EU privacy laws.
In August 2016, the EU-US Privacy Shield framework came into effect, which “protects the fundamental rights of anyone in the EU whose personal data is transferred to the United States for commercial purposes. It allows the free transfer of data to companies that are certified in the US under the Privacy Shield.” – European Commission website
However after today’s CJEU ruling, this Privacy Shield framework became invalidated due to significant differences between EU and US privacy laws.
European privacy law activist Max Schrems summarises with “The Court clarified for a second time now that there is a clash between EU privacy law and US surveillance law. As the EU will not change its fundamental rights to please the NSA, the only way to overcome this clash is for the US to introduce solid privacy rights for all people – including foreigners. Surveillance reform thereby becomes crucial for the business interests of Silicon Valley.” – noyb website
Today’s ruling also continues to spark concern into the legitimacy of US privacy laws which doesn’t fully protect people’s personal data when hosted on cloud servers based in the US.
How will this affect you?
For any business operating a website in the EU or if you have traffic coming to your website from EU visitors, you need to know what data you’re capturing and where this data is being stored.
Here’s what Maja Smoltczyk (Berlin’s Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information) says:
Controllers who transfer personal data to the USA, especially when using cloud-based services, are now required to switch immediately to service providers based in the European Union or a country that can ensure an adequate level of data protection. The CJEU has made it refreshingly clear that data exports are not just financial decisions, as people’s fundamental rights must also be considered as a matter of priority. This ruling will put an end to the transfer of personal data to the USA for the sake of convenience or to cut costs.
The controller is you (not Google) and by transferring data to the US you are at risk of being fined up to €20 million or 4% of your annual worldwide turnover for not being GDPR compliant.
It’s you who has to take action, not Google or other US companies. The court’s decision has immediate effect. While we assume there will be a grace period, companies should act now as finding and implementing alternatives solution can take a while.
Can no data be exported outside the EU anymore?
Data can still be exported outside the EU if an adequate level of data protection is guaranteed. This is the case for some trading partners of the EU such as New Zealand, Japan, Switzerland, and Canada. They have been certified by the EU as having a comparable level of privacy protection and therefore demonstrate adequacy at a country level.
Necessary data can still flow to countries like the US too. This is for example the case when someone books a hotel in the US or when sending an email to someone in the US. Backups for disaster recovery and most other reasons don’t qualify as necessary.
In all other cases you can still send data to countries like the US if you get explicit and informed consent from a user. Meaning the user has been informed about all possible risks of sending the data to the US and who can access the data (for example the US government).
How this affects Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager users
If your website is using Google Analytics, the safest bet is to deactivate it immediately. Otherwise, you must ask for consent from everyone who visits your website and inform them that the data will be processed in the United States under less strict privacy laws and all associated risks. If you don’t, you could be liable to privacy law infringements and face being fined for not complying with the GDPR. This also applies to Google Tag Manager as it transfers the IP address to the US which is considered personal data under the GDPR.
Consent needs to be:
- Freely given (the user must have a choice to not give consent and be able to opt out at any time)
- Informed (you need to disclose who is processing the data, what data is processed, where the data will be stored and how to opt out)
- Specific (consent is only valid for the specific informed purpose)
- Unambiguous (for example pre-ticked boxes or similar aren’t allowed)
If users don’t give you consent, you are not allowed to track them using Google Analytics or any other US based cloud solution.
Update August 19, 2020
A month after this ruling, over 100 complaints have been filed against websites for continuing to send data to the US via Google Analytics or Facebook, by the European privacy campaign group noyb. It’s clear Google and Facebook fall under US surveillance laws such as FISA 702 and the court clearly ruled these companies cannot rely on SCCs to transfer data to the US. Anyone still using Google Analytics is now at risk of facing fines and compensation damages.
How this affects Matomo users
Our cloud servers are based in Germany.
Matomo On-Premise users choose the location of their data themselves. If the servers are located in the EU nothing changes. If the servers are located outside the EU and the website targets EU users and tracks personal data, then you need to assess whether you are required to ask for tracking consent.
If the data is stored inside the EU you can use Matomo without asking for any consent and you can continue tracking users even if they reject a consent screen which greatly increases the quality of your data.
Want to avoid informing users about transferring their data to the US and all associated risks?
Try Matomo now for free! No credit card required.
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Matomo will now pay researchers 5,000 USD for a critical security vulnerability
7 mai 2020, par Matomo Core TeamMatomo Analytics is the leading open-source web analytics solution, designed to give you conclusive insights while respecting your user’s privacy, and keeping your data secure. We’re so proud Matomo is trusted with the analytics data of more than 1 million sites worldwide.
Although we have had an excellent security track record so far, we recognise security is an ongoing challenge and requires constant vigilance. With this announcement we’re showing our commitment to reward those who help us maintain the highest security in Matomo.
New bounty of 5,000 USD for a CRITICAL security issue responsibly disclosed to us
We’re now paying 5,000 USD or 4,700 EUR for each critical vulnerability found, and responsibly disclosed to us. (Previously this bounty was less than 1,000USD.)
A Critical Issue in Matomo means an issue in our latest official release at: builds.matomo.org/latest.zip as installed on a typical server (and possibly using any of our official plugins by Matomo or InnoCraft from the Marketplace).
If you can gain remote code execution on the server (i.e. RCE), or if you’re able to delete data with an HTTPS request (i.e. SQL Injection), this may qualify as a Critical Issue. Please report it on Hackerone.
Matomo keeps your data secure
The Matomo team has always been committed to achieving the highest standard of security. For example, Matomo was one of the first open-source projects in the world to launch a public bug bounty in January 2011. Every year many researchers, users and customers review the Matomo source code, and overall we’ve rewarded dozens of researchers over the years for their work in keeping Matomo data safe.
How to make your Matomo server even more secure?
Check out our recommendations in How to configure Matomo for Security -
12 ways Matomo Analytics helps you to protect your visitor’s privacy
This post was originally published on January 11, 2017, and updated on May, 2020.
At Matomo we think privacy matters. From the beginning, Matomo has had a strong focus on privacy and ensuring the privacy of your visitors and analytics data.
Here are some ways how you can ensure your users and visitors privacy by using Matomo (Piwik).
1. Owning the data gives you power to protect user privacy
Whether you host Matomo on-premises yourself, or whether you use Matomo’s cloud, YOU keep control of your data and nobody else. By knowing exactly where your data is stored and having full control over what happens to it, you have the power to protect your user’s privacy. No-one else can claim ownership.
2. GDPR compliance
GDPR is one of the most important privacy laws to have come out in the last few years. As such, Matomo takes GDPR compliance very seriously. There’s even a 12-step checklist for you to follow to ensure your Matomo is GDPR compliant. Not only that Matomo is HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD, and PECR compliant.
3. Data anonymization
For better privacy by default, Matomo implements a range of data anonymization techniques. One of the main techniques is not recording the full IP address of your visitors. Some countries even require you to anonymize additional info considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
To change the IP anonymization settings go to “Administration > Privacy”.
4. Configuring Matomo to not process personal data or personally identifiable information (PII)
To further protect the privacy of your visitors, you can learn how to not process any personal information or PII.
5. Deleting old visitor logs
The is important because visitor logs contain information all the collected raw data about every visitor and every action. You can configure Matomo to automatically delete logs from the database. When you delete old logs, only the real time and visitor log reports will no longer work for this old time period, all other aggregated reports will still work.
For privacy reasons, we highly recommend that you keep the detailed Matomo logs for only 3 to 6 months and delete older log data. This has one other nice side effect: it will free significant database space, which will, in turn, slightly increase performance!
6. Supporting the Do Not Track preference
Do Not Track enables users to opt out of any tracking by websites they do not visit, including analytics services, advertising networks, and social platforms. By default, Matomo respects users preference and will not track visitors which have specified “I do not want to be tracked” in their web browsers. Get more information about DoNotTrack.
To make sure Do Not Track is respected, go to “Administration => Privacy”.
7. Including an Opt-Out Feature on your website or app
By embedding the Opt-Out feature in your website, you give your visitors the possibility to opt-out of the tracking. When you go to “Administration > Privacy”, you will be able to copy and paste an HTML Iframe code to embed the opt-out feature for example into your privacy policy page or in your ‘Legal’ page. Your users can then click on a link to opt-out.
On the Matomo Marketplace there are also some plugins available to customize the Opt-Out experience. For example AjaxOptOut and CustomOptOut.
8. Disabling Live features
The Real-Time, Visitor Log and Visitor Profile features give you insights into the tracked raw data by showing you details about every visitor and every action they performed. To protect the privacy of your visitors you may decide to prevent access to such features by disabling the “Live” plugin in “Administration => Plugins”. This way only aggregated reports will be shown in your Matomo.
9. Disabling fingerprinting across websites
By default, when one of your visitors visits several of your websites, Matomo will create a fingerprint for this user that will be different across the websites to increase the visitors’ privacy. You can make sure that this feature is disabled by going to “Administration => Config file” and verifying that the value of “enable_fingerprinting_across_websites” is set to zero.
10. Disabling tracking cookies
Matomo uses first-party cookies to store some information about visitors between visits. In some countries, the legislation requires websites to provide a way for users to opt-out of all tracking, in particular tracking cookies. You can disable cookies by adding one line in the Matomo Javascript code.
11. Creating the tool of your dreams by developing your own plugins and getting access to the API
Matomo is an open platform that lets you extend and customise the tracking; reporting; and user interface to your needs and to protect your visitors’ privacy the way you want or need it. Learn more in the Matomo Developer Zone. You may also have a look at our Matomo Marketplace where you can find several free and premium features to extend your Matomo.
12. Transparency
By default, all information and all collected data in your Matomo server are protected and nobody can access it. However, Matomo allows you to optionally make your collected data public and you can export any Matomo report including the whole dashboard to embed it into your website. This way you can show your users exactly which information you track. When you decide to make reports public, we do our best to protect privacy and automatically hide any Personally Identifiable Information such as the Visitor Profile and we make sure to not show any Visitor IP address and the Visitor ID.
Bonus tip – A privacy policy template for you
When you use Matomo to track your visitors, we recommend you update your Privacy Policy to explain how Matomo is used and what data it gathers. Here’s a Privacy Policy template for you to copy on your site.
Continuous privacy improvements
We are always interested in improving the privacy. If you miss any feature or have an idea on how to improve the privacy, please let us know.
More information about all the Matomo features
If you want to learn more about all the features in Matomo, have a look at our User Guides and FAQ entries.
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Find a great Google Tag Manager alternative in Matomo Tag Manager
If you’re looking for a tag management system that rivals Google’s, then Matomo Tag Manager is a great Google Tag Manager alternative that takes your tracking to the next level.
What’s a tag manager?
If you’re not familiar with Google Tag Manager or Matomo Tag Manager – they’re both free tag management systems that let you manage all your website code snippets (tags) in one place.
Tags are typically JavaScript code or HTML that lets you integrate various features into your site in just a few clicks. For example: analytics codes, conversion tracking codes, exit popups and surveys, remarketing codes, social widgets, affiliates, and ads. With a tag manager, you get to easily look into and manage these different tracking codes.
Why use a tag manager?
Tag management systems are game changers because they let you track important data more effectively by easily adding code snippets (tags) to your website.
By not needing to hard code each individual code you also save time. Rather than waiting for someone to make tag changes and to deploy your website, you can make the changes yourself without needing the technical expertise of a developer.
Why is Matomo Tag Manager a great Google Tag Manager alternative?
Matomo Tag Manager is a great Google Tag Manager alternative. Not only does it let you manage all your tracking and marketing tags in one place, it also offers less complexity and more flexibility.
By tagging your website and using Matomo Tag Manager alongside Matomo Analytics, you can collect much more data than you’d be able to otherwise.
A bonus to using Matomo is the privacy and data ownership aspect. With Matomo you also get the added peace of mind that comes with 100% data ownership and privacy protection. You will never be left wondering what’s happening to your data. Rest assured knowing you’re doing the best to protect user privacy, while getting useful insights to improve your website.
And since Matomo Tag Manager is the one of the best alternatives to Google Tag Manager, you’ll gain more than you lose by having full confidence that your data is yours to own.
Three key benefits of using Matomo Tag Manager:
- Empowers you to deploy and manage your own tags
This takes the hassle out of needing a web developer to hard code and edit every tag on your website. Now you can deploy tracking code on chosen pages and track various data yourself.
- Open up endless possibilities on data tracking
Dig a lot deeper to track analytics, conversions, and more. Now you can implement advanced tracking solutions without needing to pay an external source.
- Save time and create your own impact
With limited resources you certainly don’t want to be wasting any time having to go back and forth with an external party over what tags to add or take away. An over-dependence on web developers or agencies carrying out tag management for you, stalls growth and experimentation opportunities. With a tag management system you have the convenience of inserting your own tags and getting to a desired outcome faster. You won’t have to forgo tracking opportunities because now it’s in your hands.
- Empowers you to deploy and manage your own tags
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Paid Advertising Performance – target the right customers and invest confidently
You can now analyse the success of your Google Ads campaigns and accounts directly in your Matomo with ease. See what keywords and search queries are leading to clicks for your paid ads and bringing your business the highest ROI, right down to devices and networks – for more effective targeting.
For many Matomo users, Google Ads is the lifeline for their business. If people are looking for products you sell, you’ll want them to find you first.
Invest confidently in the right keywords and target the right customers for higher ROI
You can accurately measure the success of your impressions, clicks, costs, CPC and CPAs and see how they directly relate to the goals you’ve created in your Matomo.
-> Read the rest of the story on the Form Analytics Marketplace page.
What does the new Paid Advertising Performance feature look like?
The PPC Advertising Performance plugin integrates seamlessly with Matomo’s Row Evolution feature to show you how the performance of your campaigns change over time. This way you can see if the changes you’ve made have a positive or negative effect on sales over time.
The Visitor Profiles feature is also integrated within the plugin so you can get a detailed overview of everyone who clicks on your ads. This will tell you if they have visited your website in the past and to what extent, so you can identify and target more like-minded customers for more sales when setting up your next campaign.
Where do I get the Paid Advertising Performance feature?
Paid Advertising Performance is available on the Matomo Marketplace:
Learn more from the PaidAdvertisingPerformance user guide and FAQs.
